


Sehidup Semati

by magma_maiden



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Cisswap, English translation, F/M, Female Senju Hashirama, Tragedy, cisbent, first person POV, modified izanagi, mutually assured destruction, non linear, pov switching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:40:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24641884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magma_maiden/pseuds/magma_maiden
Summary: Hashirama was an anomaly. Madara was an enigma. Within a season and a hair's breadth, they both broke their clans' rules. Their body, soul, and chakra were longing to melt. Ego and circumstances dragged their hearts. They didn't know it's not easy to betray a promise of life and death.[ 2019 Indonesian Fanfiction Awards' Best Angst/Tragedy & Best Drama Oneshot ]
Relationships: Senju Hashirama/Uchiha Madara
Comments: 10
Kudos: 23





	Sehidup Semati

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Sehidup Semati](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18511033) by [magma_maiden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magma_maiden/pseuds/magma_maiden). 



> naruto (c) masashi kishimoto; no material profit gained from this fic
> 
> canonical, mild gore, implicit sexual scenes, POV switching in the middle
> 
> translated by benedicta_morte
> 
> i know in the story it says izanami but apparently i've mixed it up with izanagi...........
> 
> originally the title appears here and there throughout the story, but when translated into english we had to wreak our brains to fit it into the sentences ahah i hope the meaning isn't lost in translation!

For an Uchiha shinobi, the most sacred rule in life is to never trust a Senju.

Just a season after meeting Senju Hashirama, I broke that rule.

It was a stupid decision, I know. I was still a greenhorn, young and naïve. Even the most absurd dream was better than bloody reality full of death. I didn’t understand why everyone around me thought it was normal.

“Living like this… isn’t it useless?” I popped a rhetorical question beneath the golden twilight sky. “Continuously killing until you get killed.”

“… Unless we change it,” Hashirama said, standing sideways at the side of the cliff where we used to race. “Make them question it.”

How? An elder’s command is absolute, unless we are prepared for the punishment.

“People will only listen to the strongest,” I quipped. “We have to become stronger.”

“Even the strong will eventually grow old and die,” Hashirama said with the forest canopy shadowing her face. “The generation after us might go back to killing each other.”

“Not if we live forever, Hashi.”

“Is there any way for humans to cheat death?”

“If I know, I’ll tell you.” I grinned. “Let’s become strong and eternal, together; in life and death.”

“Promise?” Hashirama tilted her head. “Until then, let’s not kill each other.”

I agreed, linking our pinkies together. How naïve. That kind of empty dream could blind any child; any child who doesn’t know how cruel the world is and how unchangeable the reality that binds every life.

That dream had a name now, and it’s called a mistake. Slowly I grew sick of the village, to every clan who tailed after her like some ducklings, and to her own self.

I hated her, with all my entire being.

“Hashirama is dead.”

The guttural voice brought me back to the musty and dark cave. My five nails dug my left chest. It was still pulsing, and so did she.

“Say that again.”

“Senju Hashirama is dead. All of Konoha is mourning her.”

“Really?” I couldn’t help the amusement hinted in my voice. “Says who?”

My eyes opened to a set of serrated teeth belonging to the white creature in front of me. The obituary was delivered with an insulting grin.

“Says her brother, of course.”

My nails dug deeper. The sound of my laughter boomed from the bottom of my stomach, echoing off the rough walls of the cave. Unexpectedly Senju Tobirama could get rid of his arrogance and stated that the goddess was as mortal as any other humans.

Starting today, only I alone could feel the goddess’ pulse of life.

Hashirama is an odd existence that I couldn’t push, couldn’t pull, couldn’t embrace—no matter how long we were together.

I knew her deeper than anyone; more than her brother, more than the man who married her, more than her children whom I have never met; more than the entire Senju clan, more than the entire Konoha village.

Like it or not, I had to admit, Hashirama burned me. Ironic, I knew. But have you ever met an entity that pulled you closer and closer until you were drowned in its suffocating light?

Suffocating. That was how it felt living in Konoha, breathing the same air in the same space as Senju Hashirama; breathing the same air as the murderer of Izuna, my dear sister.

“You’ve been distant lately.”

The Hokage met me in a hidden cranny in the middle of my clan’s forest when I had just returned from my wandering. Her beautiful face forced a sad smile. Her eyes stared at me but I know it was not my face that she beheld. Every shinobi were experts in trickery; the goddess was no exception.

I was sure she was staring at her nemesis.

“You are the one who doesn’t have time, Hokage-sama,” I snapped as I struck at the training dummies. This training was no more than chit-chat—useless.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” the woman whined as she went through the grass between us. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Have you?” I asked skeptically, still facing away. I realized I hurt her heart deeper when she stopped moving.

“… Madara.”

My wrath sparked. The three training dummies disappeared in flames. The goddess couldn’t be heard more pathetically than this. She shouldn’t be heard so weakly; she was no farmer’s daughter begging on her knees for mercy from a bandit—

I turned around, throwing a deadly rhetoric, “Don’t you have more important matters to think about? Like your wedding, for example?”

Satisfaction bloomed in my chest when Hashirama froze. Her fingers clutched into the edges of her kimono. The fear that I loathed was mirrored in her eyes.

“In a week, you’ll swear your life and death to someone else,” I continued out loud. “That kind of promise could only be bound to one person.”

Ah, I forgot. Maybe she did too. That promise was made a long time ago. A promise made by naïve kids years ago was no longer important to our present.

“It’s only political,” she insisted. “It’s not for my whole life and death.”

“There’s no difference. I don't belong here anymore.” My clan had abandoned me. My dear sister had died, while her murderer was free to roam.

The fact that people were willing to face this reality is something that I couldn’t accept.

She reached for me and I brushed her away. I cut the distance between us to whisper in her ear, “Konoha is a mistake.”

Hashirama swallowed her voice, the voice that sounds suspiciously like a sob. I cradled her cheeks. There she was, standing and tilting her head up even though our heights were almost the same, showing off her artery in my reach. Her eyebrows scrunched up swallowing her cries, strands of hair slightly mussed up. Her artery throbbed once; this was not normal. Hashirama shouldn’t act like this, showing off her weakness as if surrendering herself to the man who once told her to slice her own stomach—

I knew a week from today there would be news about her wedding with another man. The news would spread all over the place wherever I would go.

I couldn’t deny that I want to have all of her to myself. I wanted to see her wearing this face all the time—

Hashirama was an anomaly that would never be mine except during this slice of time.

I cursed myself and grabbed her. I threw her to the ground, she pulled me in. Our lips met in a frenzy. I know the next time we met, we would have to kill each other. So after I spilled half of my life into her womb, I made a plan. 

The goddess would never rise back to the surface of the earth. She would be buried underground for all eternity.

Eternity was not a word in a shinobi’s dictionary. Everyday we were aware of the possibility that anyone can die without any signs. Every breath, every step, every moment was a certainty of our mortality.

That was how it felt the moment Madara laid me down; melting our souls, bodies, and chakra; as honest and naked as it possibly could. Without status or responsibility that burdened me. Without boundary, without hesitation. 

Without holding back my flowing tears.

They flowed freely; flowing like the swift current of the river where we met. The then lonely river was now flanked with a row of mokuton houses. Their residents were lining up, clapping their hands in congratulatory gesture as they threw wild flowers upon me and my new husband.

I ended my days as a maiden. Madara disappeared.

But not from my mind.

So when he appeared, challenging Konoha, I was the only one who could stop him. I entrusted the village to my brother, preparing him for the burden of leadership.

“Of all men, why did you choose to be loyal to the worst one in life and death, Aneja?” Tobirama threw the rhetoric in one afternoon when I finished the preparations for my wedding, after I told him how lost I was without Madara.

How could I answer him? Madara was still an enigma that I would never be able to understand. No matter how close I was to the answer, he slipped right through my fingers, leaving me once more at a loss. Why was he so reluctant to stay here, just when our dream had come true? This was my fault. I left him alone too much when I formed political bonds to strengthen our village. 

No, that wasn’t it. I had known for some time—yet I chose to ignore it—that what we’ve dreamt for was not his goal anymore. Madara wasn’t the same optimistic boy who became my close friend decades ago. Now he was just a bitter man who had lost everything—everything he once protected and loved.

To say that it didn’t hurt knowing Madara hated me was a lie.

“If you fail to kill him,” my brother continued, dropping a small bag seemingly filled with sand grains on my palm, “We’ll all die. This is just in case.”

I tried to find an answer, a denial, anything that could convince me not to kill Madara. But what I’ve found on the training ground that day confirmed me that I did not have any other choice. Sooner or later, I needed to stop him.

I was his only equal.

When we fought with all our might, both the earth and the ocean split. Broke. Land became sea, sea became land. I couldn’t imagine what would happen to Konoha if I lost here.

I gave Madara the quickest death with what remained of my power. I pushed my sword into his heart. I didn’t know that it would be my chest that tore open and bloomed red with blood. The pain drowned my consciousness.

“Izanami is an anchor, Zetsu. An anchor that cheats death.” Madara’s voice pulled me from the sea of illusion after a long time had passed. “The wound she gave me will return to her. If I die, so does Hashirama. My body will be forever bound to hers.”

Cheating death. Together in life and death.

I blinked, but I could only see dimming light. The tips of my finger found the rough surface of rocks. My body was weak and hadn't completely healed from our fight. But I still had one more secret.

I thought hard about his words. If it was true that Izanami is the jutsu that really bound our bodies, then…

A finger touched my cheek. Cold.

The same cold thumb brushed my slightly opened lips.

A warm breath.

His nose to mine, cold and dry.

The soft touch of his rough lips reminded me of that day in the training ground four years ago— I lost my breath when Madara caressed the splitting wound above my heart, alighting the remains of my chakra when I found the strands of his hair between my fingers. My chakra, my body, my soul, all opened up to him and only for him.

I melted again with him, stripping away my status and title outside the darkness

I melted again with him, for the second and last time.

Then he stepped away, and I felt something was off. My heart was whole, but it felt different.

Everything felt different. There was an unseen link connecting me with Madara. The farther he walked away, the bigger my urge to follow him. Prickling pain dotted around my scapula, the same places where my nails scratched his back just a moment ago.

Was this Izanami?

“What are you planning, Madara?” I asked impatient, ignoring the cold creeping through my body.

Madara just smiled.

Why did you look this happy? I inhaled air as much as I could, holding my tears at bay before they could fall. “Are you going to destroy Konoha?” I pushed.

“Let’s just say, I will make you watch me correcting our mistakes,” he answered with a faint voice. “We started this. Let us end this. Together.”

I stood, focusing on the remains of my chakra. “I don’t want to kill you, but you don’t give me any other choice.”

Tobirama would become a great Hokage, I’m sure.

“You would never—”

I joined my palms. Immediately pain flared within my body as Madara fell on the cave floor. My body and his were both torn open from the inside, slowly. The difference is, something was tearing his body apart, something that was activated by my chakra.

Madara pushed himself up and roared, while I gritted my teeth. I let out a sob as our left shoulders split open and sprayed blood. A red stained sapling grew from his wound. More saplings sprouted, tearing at his flesh and skin, drinking up his chakra greedily to grow. Madara’s hand reached up to me, frozen in the air.

The saplings’ stalks and stems prevented his wound from closing. Izanami might transfer wounds, but wounds that constantly opened would never be able to heal.

Of course, that means my healing power couldn’t heal all the gaping wounds on my body. I closed my eyes, resisting the pain. I know he had activated his mangekyo sharingan.

If I looked at him, I would be lost.

“What are you doing, Hashirama?!”

Our blood pooled beneath our feet like a red pond. I caressed his cheeks and wiped the blood flowing from his lips. “I have to do this, Madara,” I whispered. “I cannot let you destroy Konoha… because our children are there.”

I leaned my forehead to his. My hand reached behind his head, entwining my fingers to form a snake seal. I used all my chakra to make a criss-crossing mokuton fence around us, isolating us from the rest of the world.

Forever.

In life and death.

“Hashi—”

For a Senju shinobi, the most sacred rule in a fight is to never look into a pair of active sharingan.

Just a hair’s breadth from Uchiha Madara’s face, I broke that rule.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading and let me know what you think


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